A Gamble
by beachglass5387
Summary: Brienne makes the first move. Written for the Summer 2011 Exchange on jaimexbrienne on LJ.


Author's Note: None of the characters are mine.

**A Gamble**

"Well, I suppose we'll find out once and for all if I'm any use as a fighter anymore," he says jokingly. "Provided we're not all killed, at least one of my bannermen will be richer by the end of the day."

Brienne winces. She had hoped that Jaime was unaware of the bets his lords had been placing on his chances of being killed or further maimed. She had learned of it when one of the men had drunkenly offered to cut her in – her fist had ached for a day afterwards and everyone had had better sense than to mention it in her hearing since.

"I hope that you haven't bet against me," he says.

"I would never place a bet on-"She starts angrily, annoyed that he thinks she so would be so callus, but she trails off when she realizes he is teasing her.

"Something as unlikely as the survival of a one-handed swordsman in a battle?" Jaime says, finishing her sentence. "Shame. I hear the odds are excellent."

"Jaime…" She says uncertainly.

"I'm not afraid to die, so long as I can die while holding a sword in my good hand," he tells her.

She believes him. It is she who is afraid of him dying. It seems likely that he will. It seems likely that they all will. Impulsively, she reaches out and closes her hand around his stump. He looks surprised – the Maid of Tarth never touches anyone impulsively. Before he can say anything, before she can think, she leans forward and presses her lips to his.

He does not pull away and his body seems to slump forward into hers slightly. She cannot tell him that she is scared. She cannot tell him that she knows how humiliating it is to be the subject of bets and speculation. She cannot ask him to stay back from the front lines. She cannot even offer to stay by his side throughout the fighting. She wants him to know how much it would matter to her he died, but, in the few minutes before they must go and join the rest of the army, she cannot find the words. All she can do is touch him and hope that he understands.

She slowly pulls away, she sees that Jaime's eyes are fixed on her hand, still wrapped tight around his stump. "Why did you do that?" He asks softly. He does not sound angry or disgusted, just confused.

"Because we might die," she says. "Because I wanted to."

"Brienne," he says, and, for an instant, she thinks that he is about to raise his left hand to touch her. She hears rustling behind her and Jaime looks over her shoulder. "It is time," he says, drawing his right arm out of her grasp. Brienne turns to see Ser Ilyn Payne standing behind her with Pod at his heels. Pod is holding her helm and Ser Ilyn is making a terrible clacking noise. Never were two kinsmen more dissimilar, Brienne thinks.

"Ser Ilyn," Jaime says jovially, all traces of confusion gone from his voice. He moves forward to clap the man on the shoulder. "I hope you're planning on joining me in the vanguard. We disfigured knights should stick together! And there's no man alive with a battle hiss more terrifying than yours."

Pod walks over to Brienne to offer her her helm. She takes it, looking him up and down – she is struck again by how small he is. "Pod," she says slowly.

"My place is beside you, ser. Sorry. My lady." He says staring up at her determination.

She nods; she will not insult him by telling him that she is as afraid for him as she is for Jaime. "I am glad of it," she says, trying to sound more optimistic than she feels.

"Brienne," Jaime calls back to her from the door of the tent. She looks up to meet his gaze. "Thank you," he says. Then he is gone and Brienne is left alone in the tent with her would-be squire.

She takes a deep breath, wondering if she will ever speak to Jaime Lannister again. "Come, Pod," she says. "Make sure you stay close to me."

Brienne has always finds that time seems to both speed and slow during a battle – each thrust and parry seems to take a lifetime and then the fighting is over in a blink. Today is no different and when she is left alive, with only an arrow in her shoulder and a jagged slash on her calf, it seems it must have been only seconds since she and Pod rode into the battle and only minutes since she was in that tent, alone with Jaime.

After the fighting is over, it always seems impossible that there was ever a real chance that she could have died - could have simply stopped being. When she sees Jaime dismount across the campground, looking relatively unhurt and laughing with a group of knights, it seems equally improbable that he could ever have been killed. _Of course he is alive_, she thinks. All the same, she feels relief flood over her. The victory had been hard won, but decisive enough that it is unlikely that there will be any more fighting for weeks – maybe even months. She is not officially part of the army, but she supposes that she and Pod will stay in the camp.

"Has the bleeding stopped?" she asks, tearing her eyes away from Jaime and looking down at her squire. His shoulder is drenched in blood from where his earlobe had been sliced off, but he seems delighted.

"Yes, ser!" he says. He had killed the older squire whose blade had taken the lobe – it makes Brienne proud and a little sad. "You need to see a maester, ser. Um….My lady," he says, seeming to remember some of his shyness.

She nods. "Later," she says. "There are others with much worse hurts than mine." Biting down on her lower lip, she reaches to grab the broken off shaft of the arrow and wrenches it out of her shoulder, as a maester had instructed her to do the last time she had been shot. The pain is near blinding and she crashes to her knees as her head spins, cursing herself for not sitting down first.

"Ser!" Pod yells, kneeling down beside her. Brienne closes her eyes, trying to summon the words to reassure the boy that she's alright. Her head swims and she falls back. Then there is nothing.

"Easy there, lad," she hears a deep voice say. She is lying on her back in what seems to be a tent. "You heard what he said. She just fainted and hit her head. She's coming out of it now. Give her some space. "

She looks up to see a man. Ser Addam Marbrand, she recalls dimly. She tries to sit up and he reaches down to grab her good arm and helps Pod haul her into a sitting position. She is back in a tent. "Thank you, ser," she says.

"Jaime saw you fall," Marbrand says, an odd look on his face. "Said to tell you that you should let someone else pull out the arrows next time."

"Jaime?" she asks, trying to get her vision to focus and to make sense of what is happening.

"He's gone to hear the hostages formally surrender," Marbrand says. "He'll be back."

"Back?" Brienne asks, confused.

"Carried you in here, my lady," Pod says, sounding worried. "Him and Ser Addam."

"But I wasn't anywhere near them," she says. She knows she sounds stupid, but they are both talking as if all of this should somehow make sense to her and it does not. "Where am I?"

"Jaime saw you fall," Marbrand says again, standing up. "You're in his tent. Said it was closer than yours. You've been unconscious for most of the evening. Now that you're awake, I have other duties to attend to."

"Of course," Brienne says, realizing how odd it is that a man like Ser Addam Marbrand is playing nursemaid. "I am sorry for causing you trouble."

Marbrand gives her the same strange smile. "Not to worry. I'm starting to think that you'll be the sort that always pays debts." An odd thing to say, Brienne thinks, but he strides out of the tent before Brienne can ask him any more questions.

Pod hands her a cup of water and she takes a sip, finally feeling her head begin to clear. "What happened?" She asks.

"Well…" Pod says. "You fell and I saw the arrow in your hand and then you fainted."

"What happened after that?" Brienne asks, gritting her teeth.

"I..I didn't know what to do, ser…Sorry, my lady. But Ser Jaime, he came over and he checked you and said you were fine, just… well…."

"Just what, Pod?"

"Stupid, my lady. He said it was just like you to make it through the battle and then collapse because you were too stubborn to wait for a maester. That's what he said, ser. Not me. I-"

Brienne groans. Her shoulder and leg are throbbing and she is mortified. "Then what?" she asks.

"Ser Addam came over and asked why Ser Jaime had run off and then Ser Jaime told him to grab your feet and help him move you."

Brienne almost wishes she had not made it through the battle. "Why did you let them?" she moans under her breath.

"S..My lady?" Pod asks.

She looks at him – he is still covered in blood and dirt and he looks even younger than usual. The thought of him trying to argue with Jaime Lannister and Addam Marbrand almost makes her smile.

"Where is Oathkeeper?" she asks.

"Over there, my lady," Pod says, seeming to sense that he is on safer ground. He nods to the foot of the cot she is lying on and Brienne sees her sword carefully placed on top of her armor. She looks down in momentary panic and is relieved to see she is still wearing her shirt, now stiff with blood, and her breeches. She sees that one of the legs of the breeches has been cut off and she realizes that the wound on her calf is worse than she had thought.

Pod follows her gaze. "Ser Addam reckoned that you lost more blood than you realized," he says.

"Yes," Brienne says heavily.

"But you'll be fine?" Pod asks, sounding nervous.

"Yes," Brienne says again, trying to sound stronger than she feels.

"My armor…"She says.

"I took it off. It's my job, as your squire. I-"

"Waited to remove it all until _after_ we dragged you across half the camp, clanking all the way," a familiar voice says from the doorway of the tent. Pod scrambles to his feet as Jaime strides toward them.

"Sorry, my lord," the squire says quickly. "I didn't…I…It.."

"Why don't you go get something to eat?" Jaime interrupts, not unkindly. Pod looks back at Brienne and she nods.

"I'll be back soon, my lady, with a…I'll be back" he says, looking uneasily at Jaime, as if the man is likely to forbid him from returning.

"Thank you, Pod," Brienne says, attempting to smile but only succeeding in making an odd sort of grimace. Jaime guffaws as the squire leaves.

"Why did you have me moved in here?" She asks looking up at him, embarrassment and dizziness making her short-tempered.

"Having you sprawled out in the middle of camp would be bad for morale," he says, apparently unfazed by her anger.

"I meant, why did you have me moved in _here_," she repeats, glaring.

"It was closer than your tent. You're not light, you know," he says, grinning. "Why do you always insist on sleeping so far on the outskirts that you're almost not a part of the camp?"

"Because I don't trust-" she starts in irritation, knowing that he already knows the answer. He is smirking at her and she stops abruptly. She had not thought she they would ever argue like this again. We_ are alive_, she thinks, the wild improbability of it all finally striking her. She laughs. Laughs and cannot stop. It is unlike her and she imagines that the combination of her giddiness at their survival and the blood loss must be making her hysterical.

"Brienne," he says slowly, in a different voice. "When you fell…"

Somehow this just makes her laugh harder. "I hit my head," she splutters.

"Yes," he says, sitting down on the camp stool beside the cot. _His cot_, she thinks. He reaches out to touch her shoulder and she winces, not only from pain. She stops laughing abruptly.

"I didn't see you in the battle," she says, suddenly serious.

He shrugs. "I fought well enough, as you can see. Ser Ilyn was a better teacher than most imagined," he says.

"Was?"

"Slain."

"I'm sorry," Brienne says.

Jaime runs his hand through his hair. "I'm surprised to find that I am, too. I'd grown rather fond of his hissing and, in your absence, he was the only one I could count on to ride beside me in taciturn silence."

Brienne does not know what to say and she suddenly remembers that the last time she had not known what to say to him, she had kissed him. Now that battle no longer looms over them and she has a moment to think, she cannot believe that she had been so bold. What could she have been thinking? She is relieved that his demeanor towards her seems unchanged – perhaps he has forgotten. Or perhaps he is just waiting for an audience to mock her. She sighs. She is too tired and her body aches too much for her to worry about it now.

"Ser Addam said you had gone to talk to the hostages," she says, hoping to steer the conversation back to something practical.

"Yes. They're out of sorts about being held by a one-handed man, but I got one of them to tell me that their army is running dangerously low on supplies. They seem worse off than we thought."

"You think that's why we won today?" Brienne asks. Pain is making it difficult to focus on what he is saying, but she feels a need to keep distracting him with talk about the battle, just in case he is planning on mentioning that she kissed him.

"Do you? You're not going to try to tell me that we won because the gods are on our side?"

"No," she says flatly.

"Brienne," he says, reaching out to touch her shoulder again.

"I should go," she says quickly. "Back to my tent. To find Pod. To-" she attempts to stand and falls heavily, biting back a cry.

"You'll have trouble walking for a while yet," he says, "And I'm not carrying you anywhere else."

"I can walk," she says sullenly, though she knows it isn't true.

"So stubborn," he grins. "Your leg will need stitching and boiled wine. Your shoulder, too. Why did you rip the arrow out yourself?"

"I didn't think about it first," Brienne admits.

Jaime laughs and Brienne finds that she is smiling, too. He might be making fun of her, but it doesn't feel mean-spirited. It feels almost _friendly_. They are friends, she realizes, or, they had been before she'd been foolish enough to kiss him. Perhaps letting her convalesce in his tent is his way of letting her know that they still are. Perhaps he is willing to forget the kiss or pretend that it had been the result of nerves the last minute before battle. Had it been? She looks at him, still smirking down at her. All she can think is that she is exhausted and all she wants to do lean her body into his and close her eyes.

"Jaime? Thank you for moving me."

He nods. "That squire of yours will be back soon with a maester if I'm any judge."

She sits part way up again, shaking her head. "I told him that there are others that-"

He laughs again, softly, and pushes back down onto the cot. "That won't matter to him. You're the one he feels responsible for," he says.

She opens her mouth to protest, then closes it again. She knows what it is like to feel responsible for someone, but she is not used to thinking of other people feeling responsible for her. She feels a rush of warmth for Pod.

"That surprises you," Jaime says.

"Don't you have responsibilities to attend to?" she asks uncomfortably. She is afraid that if he stays much longer fatigue and weakness will make her reach out to touch him.

"Yes." He says nothing more and makes no effort to get up.

"Well?" she asks, glad he doesn't seem inclined to leave her alone.

"Here I am. Attending to my responsibilities," he says, shrugging.

Is he saying that she is his responsibility? She had long felt a sort of responsibility for him, but it shocks her that he might feel a reciprocal sense of duty to her.

"What surprises you now, my lady?" he asks. "That from time to time I do actually take my responsibilities seriously or that I count your continued survival among them?"

"I know that you take your responsibilities seriously," she says. It is true – she has been with Jaime's army long enough to see that he is a good leader. Her eyes feel heavy and he is so close – it would not be hard to take his hand. She could just reach for his fingers and close her eyes and go to sleep and maybe he would never even mention it.

"Brienne? You're not losing consciousness?" he asks, grabbing her elbow and shaking it slightly.

"No. Just tired," she says.

"You should stay awake until the maester's seen you. They've spent years telling me that sleeping after a head injury is the worst thing you can do. Not that I've listened."

"I don't have a real head injury," she protests.

"Then you have no excuse for being so stubborn," he says. He slides his hand down her arm to take hers. Without thinking, she curls her fingers up and squeezes his. She would have thought that holding Jaime's hand would be enough to send her into a panic attack, but instead it just makes her feel calmer.

"I'm glad you didn't die," she says, only half-awake. "Even if you weren't afraid to."

Before she can register what is happening, he leans down and kisses her. She kisses him back, holding his hand tighter and smiling against his mouth. He tastes slightly of blood, but somehow his closeness has temporarily lessened the pain in her shoulder and leg. It takes Brienne a minute to wake up fully and realize that kissing Jaime is out of the ordinary.

"Why?" she asks, shocked, when he pulls away.

"Because I've wanted to," he says, squeezing her hand, "and now I know that I can."

She can't think of anything to say, but she smiles at him and he doesn't seem to mind. She feels a rush of cold air and looks past Jaime's grin to see one of his squires entering the tent.

"Ser Jaime?" The boy asks.

"Peck," Jaime says. "So many things needing attention," he says quietly to Brienne before beckoning to the teenager to come closer.

"Here, my lord," Peck says, his eyes flicking to Brienne and Jaime's clasped hands and then quickly away. He holds a heavy looking sack out to Jaime, who lets go of Brienne's hand to take it.

"Any trouble?" he asks. "I would have collected it myself but I had other things to attend to. No matter. I'll speak with them in the morning. After all, I do my best gloating in the mornings."

"No trouble," Peck says, smiling. "They all seemed rather impressed."

"Excellent. What a joy to have such impressionable lackeys. Is the camp settling for the night?"

"Yes, my lord. Except, well…"He looks uncomfortably at Brienne. "Ser…My Lady Brienne's…..Podrick Payne is having a small disagreement with a maester."

Brienne groans just as Jaime starts to laugh. "A small disagreement?" he asks.

Peck looks down at his feet sheepishly. "He can be very loud for someone so small," he says. "I overheard him trying to get Maester Rymind to come and see my lady and…." The boy is now blushing enough to rival Podrick Payne. "I was wondering if you might want me to go and help him."

"I would appreciate it if you would tell him to get something to eat and leave Maester Rymind alone," Brienne says.

"Fortunately, what _you_ would appreciate had nothing to do with what _my_ squire will do. Peck, go tell Maester Rymind I've sent you to help Podrick Payne drag him here. Make it clear to him that whether his feet touch the ground at all between his current location and this tent or not is of little significance to me."

"Yes, my lord," Peck says, leaving quickly.

"You can't go ordering someone else's squire around," Jaime says, turning back to Brienne. He sounds more amused than annoyed.

"You just ordered your squire to go help mine subvert my express orders," Brienne points out.

"Will you stop sulking if I promise to share my winnings with you?" he asks.

"Winnings?" She asks, confused.

He shakes the sack that Pod brought and Brienne hears the jangle of coins. "I told you the odds on my surviving largely unscathed were excellent. My family did not get so rich by passing up opportunities to win large amounts of money due to personal distaste."

"But…That's…" _Exactly like him_, she thinks, _to enter a betting pool on his own survival_. She doubts there will be any similar bets made against Jaime Lannister for quite some time. He suddenly seems very close again and her head is swimming in a way that has nothing to do with her injuries.

"A Lannister pays his debts," he says, leaning towards her. "And, if the odds are in his favor, gambles." He kisses her. She draws him closer, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and thinks that the gamble she had taken in kissing him has paid off better than she ever could have imagined.


End file.
